SO I have a Paladin in the group I play in, and of course he likes to go around smiting everything that is evil. SO my question is, does the Paladin's smite ability over come the Epic DR?

I am just reading through these rules, and our DM is thinking about trying to implement some of these, and I know this will be brought up, so I figured I would ask now.

That's at least a second thread I've seen asking this question.

DR/epic is a form of damage reduction. Smite ignores all damage reduction.

Why would you think otherwise? It ignores DR/-, which is objectively better.

My general ruling at my table has been that nothing overcomes epic DR unless it says so explicitly... Due to the fact that its so rare in normal games it doesn't come up normally and the only thing that I can think off of the top of my head that can break through it is a Titan. My ruling would be that it does not overcome their DR.... however a DM could get creative with it and have the Paladin's Smite reduce their DR from Epic to Lawful, Good, or Adamantine(depending on the monster) for the duration of the Smite.

his ability to bypass DR is granted by a god.

whats more epic than that?!

A paladin's smite ignores DR/Epic.

I'll say it again.

DR/- is objectively stronger than DR/Epic. I've never seen anyone suggest Smite shouldn't ignore DR/-. Why should it not ignore the objectively weaker DR/Epic?

DR/Epic is nothing special, really. It's just a fancy name for DR/+6. It's not even an intrinsic part of the new Mythic rules, it's just more abundant within them than in previous rules.

I always just considered Epic as special due to the fact that you can't have a +6 weapon made and all the threats that have them are CR 20+. With the new exception of Mythic it was outside the scope of Level 20 PCs, something they could NOT bypass(even with penetrating strike or the like). So that is why I always felt it was strange to allow a PC to be able to bypass it with a level one ability.

DR/Epic was kind of a big deal - in 3.5, where it was intrinsically tied to Epic Level Handbook and a completely different tier of play. I don't see the reason to keep interpreting it in that context when we're talking about a different game that assigns different values to things.

I've never seen anyone suggest Smite shouldn't ignore DR/-.

That may be because there are not exactly a whole lot of evil monsters with DR/- (evil barbarians and...) so there is not much point in suggesting it. Plus, I think James Jacobs mentioned that he houserules that smite doesn't ignore DR/-.

In 3.0 Savage species there was a feat called "Roll with it" that gave you DR 2/- and it was STACKABLE I had a lvl 1 Human with 6/- and a Minotaur that had 6/- it was amazing. I kept pushing that feat every now and than just to keep the damage done didn't hurt to badly

Thank you everyone for your feedback.

And thank you Cheapy for pointing me to the other thread and comment by Jason Bulmahn.

No problem!

Smite-epic bothers me less than than smite/bludgeoning,piercing or slashing

An arrow to an evil tree should do less damage than a handaxe to an evil tree- smite or no smite!

I always just considered Epic as special due to the fact that you can't have a +6 weapon made and all the threats that have them are CR 20+. With the new exception of Mythic it was outside the scope of Level 20 PCs, something they could NOT bypass(even with penetrating strike or the like). So that is why I always felt it was strange to allow a PC to be able to bypass it with a level one ability.

Where did you get the idea that penetrating strike does not bypass damage reduction of any kind? greater penetrating strike even goes around DR/-

And you can bypass DR/epic with a +4 bane weapon